


The Girl who Dies

by jusrecht



Category: Code Geass
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-04-26
Updated: 2008-04-26
Packaged: 2018-02-11 08:52:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2061816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jusrecht/pseuds/jusrecht
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is a girl who hides. A Nina-centric piece.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Girl who Dies

  
There is a girl who hides. Because she is different. Because the world says that she is different. Weird. A puzzle piece with the wrong shade of colour. A pathetic, failed result of nature’s miscalculation.  
  
But she doesn’t think that it is her fault. She is only the quiet child who loves books and silence. Why is it wrong if she finds them infinitely more interesting than people?  
  
And so she braids her hair, wears glasses, and sits in shady corners with books others will not touch. Slipping to the background is more than easy. Shadows become her friends. She even names the one who is always with her Anin – kind, faithful Anin who always follows whatever she is doing and never leaves her to face the monsters under her bed alone. They make up her world, what little she has in the weak clutches of her mind as the real one stumbles past without as much as a glance at her.  
  
Nina discovers that she doesn’t mind that much. After all, she is a simple girl who already has everything she ever wants. Her mother’s warm smile. Her father’s firm back. Her mute but loyal friends. Her difficult books. These small tokens of happiness.  
  
Until one night, when two Elevens come into her house uninvited. And she is there, sitting in a dark corner behind a flourishing potted plant, seven and shaking and frightened, as they peal layer after layer of clothes from her mother’s body.  
  
\-----  
  
There is a girl who cries. Because her mother locks herself up in the bedroom, cuts her own wrist, and bleeds to death alone. Because her father hates her, blames her, and screams at her at the funeral when she puts a flower on the polished black mahogany casket – _you’re a mistake, you’re the devil’s child and you killed your mother._  
  
Her family falls into ruin. People talk, in hushed voices that she cannot help but overhear from behind thickets of roses, her new sanctuary because the house has become a bleak hole where father and daughter ignore each other and pretend that this feeling of helplessness shrouding them will go away if they ignore it long enough. A lot of what those people say aren’t nice at all – sometimes about her mother’s suicide, sometimes about _her_ father’s mental state, sometimes about her, the poor kid who will no doubt end up as crazy as her parents. And then she will cry and hug herself with trembling arms, but the pain doesn’t go away. And no one ever comes to make it go away.  
  
School is full of trials. The boys make fun of her and the girls avoid her like a plague, talking behind her back when they think she isn’t looking – or sometimes, when they think she _is_ looking. Laughter, she then discover, can be very painful, can sound so cruel because it pierces her heart like her father’s malevolent words. The teachers mostly do nothing. Talk, perhaps, and give her a few distant smiles, but the pity in their eyes makes her want to scream.  
  
Nina doesn’t hate. She cannot hate. Sometimes she wishes that she can because everything may turn out better then, but she just cowers and hides in her corner. She doesn’t have the strength to stand up to those who mock and ridicule her, and no one cares that she doesn’t. Glasses are convenient. She can hide behind them and she will feel safe and cowardly at the same time. But she still thinks that it’s okay. She doesn’t need that kind of friend.  
  
Fourth-grade science rudely wakes her up from the haze of illusion she has woven around herself. The theory of light and how it creates its darker counterpart. Reality which is an illusion. Friends which aren’t friends. She is alone.  
  
Her world narrows even more, into bits of flimsy thoughts, stitched together by every breath of air her lungs take in. Living is drifting, flinching, hiding. There is no purpose to such thing. She doesn’t care – why would she, if to feel is already so far beyond her grasp?  
  
But she still dreams. At night, she will dream of a knight, beautiful, brave, and kind, and she is in love with her. Sometimes it is reciprocated, sometimes it is not, and yet she still feels happier than she can remember. But she doesn’t hope – illusions are dangerous people and she has already been hurt by them more times than she can actually live with. It’s better this way, so when a night ends, she doesn’t have to choke and cry and trap herself in another wish. It’s an endless circle. Then again, so is life.  
  
She transfers school after school, following her father whenever he wants to run away. Neighbours still talk and they escape again. It is not unlike trying to escape from their own shadow. He never speaks to her anymore, but he doesn’t push her away and for her it’s more than enough. He is the only one she has, and maybe that is why she cries when he puts that gun into his mouth and kills himself.  
  
An endless circle.  
  
At fourteen, alone, broken and afraid, Nina finds herself staring at the offered hand of Milly Ashford and the warm smile on her face.  
  
\-----  
  
There is a girl who lies. Because lies are better than truths. Lies are safer, prettier, and with lies she doesn’t need to face who she really is.  
  
Milly pulls her up to her feet, the first one who cares enough to do so. After spending years and years being ignored, the warmth of her smile almost hurts. Nina spends the rest of the day trying to figure out why there are tears in her eyes.  
  
It’s difficult not to be overwhelmed. Milly is confident, funny, sexy, and witty, everything she is not, but Nina is much too grateful to feel the smallest speck of jealousy. Too many good things have happened to her since that day when she saw that blinding smile for the first time. Her circle of friends expands. It isn’t much, but they never ridicule or make fun of her, and for now it’s all that matters. Her days brighten. Her heart lightens. Her love for books and esoteric subjects doesn’t wane, but she’s now learning to smile.  
  
Milly makes it all possible.  
  
And her quiet adoration grows. It is almost inevitable, to be attracted, to feel loved. Things that she lacked, emotions that she ignored – it’s almost as if Milly holds the key to her heart and she opens the rusty lock, unleashing everything trapped within as easily as turning her palm.  
  
And then she begins to want more. Milly is the only one who can understand her, so she should be hers. After all, she has been denied everything else her entire life. This want to possess is so strong, enough for her to feel jealous at others like Shirley for taking so much of her attention, for being the object of her teasing and sometimes unabashed flirting.  
  
Nina knows that she is different, has ever been since she started dreaming about that beautiful knight who is never hers. But she also knows enough about the world by now to shut her mouth and pretend that she is no different. Lies are safer, infinitely so now that she has things to protect, things that she wants.  
  
But of course then Milly only pats her on the back and says, “It’s okay.”  
  
And she falls even deeper. And grows even more afraid. There are too many things to lose now. Choices are unavoidable. Between friendship and love, she knows she has to choose the former – the safer one – and says to herself that it’s okay. She can admire her silently, from afar, this love that will forever be unattainable for her.  
  
It isn’t until that fateful day in Kawaguchiko, under many gunpoints, that she realizes how little she knows of love  
  
\-----  
  
There is a girl who loves. Because life gives her a chance. Because it’s uncontrollable. Because this feeling of helplessness in the pit of her heart cannot be anything but love.  
  
She always dreams of a knight – beautiful, brave, kind – and she thinks she has found one when a pink-haired young woman stands between her and the world she has spent most of her life being afraid of. But Euphemia-sama isn’t a knight. She is a princess, a very beautiful one, like she is born straight from the fairy tales. And she saves her.  
  
Probably it is gratefulness at first, and it quickly grows into fervent adoration toward a princess who is as brave as a knight in her dreams. Nina doesn’t know what happens and she isn’t prepared for it. This is different from being infatuated with Milly. This _consumes_ her, flays her, eats her alive like raw fire on her virgin skin. All she understands is that she wants to meet her. She _needs_ to meet her and she tries and tries and tries, everything in and out of her power to do just that. Just to meet her.  
  
Unlike many of the prayers she has wasted in her childhood, this one doesn’t pass unheeded. She has the chance to really meet her, spends a night with her, just looking into her face, listening to her gentle voice, savoring the scent of her perfume. She cannot be happier. This beautiful princess dazzles her, captures her heart with her kindness, her warmth, her compassion. This cannot be anything but love.  
  
It’s almost frightening in a sense. The feeling is so overwhelming and she is helpless in its clutch. She cannot stop thinking about her. And then she cannot stop wanting her. Wanting her smile, her lips, her body. Wanting to please her in so many ways that it almost hurts. All she can do is to follow, the violent waves sinking her deeper and deeper still, and hopes that it doesn’t kill her somewhere along the way.  
  
But she doesn’t realize, never realizes that Euphemia has become her world. Not until it tumbles and shatters, and the fragments litter her feet like a broken hourglass.  
  
\-----  
  
There is a girl who dies. Because the person most precious to her dies. Because her world ends with it. Because there is nothing left in her but this all-consuming hatred.  
  
She is hateful, vengeful, and she is brokenhearted enough to cast her old weak, cowardly self away and seek revenge. If that useless Eleven cannot protect her, she will become her knight. Of vengeance. Of love. And she feels almost proud of it.  
  
Uranium is fascinating. Dangerous, but she has no fear anymore. Zero will pay, and she will make sure that he will pay in the most painful way possible. The end of his schemes, of everything, even herself.  
  
But she doesn’t mind, because Euphemia-sama will welcome her with open arms. And this is her last thought as she lies in her own pool of blood, wreckage of the broken Ganymede all around her equally broken body.  
  
All for her princess.  
  
\-----  
  
She is the girl who dies. Because the world says that she is different and there is no place in it for her.  
  
But she dies with a smile on her face.

  
 ****_End  
  
_


End file.
